Traitors Like Us
by Okashiina
Summary: The tributes for the 1st Hunger Games are all children of rebels - or rebels themselves. Will they unite against the Capitol one last time? Or will they become the Capitol's puppets, slaughtering each other for show?
1. Prologue

"What are they going to do to us?"

Nobody looks at the trembling child who posed this question. That's precisely what the person is — a little child, clearly emaciated, skin stretched over cheekbones, limbs oddly knobbed at the joints. Maybe its the grime on their clothes and skin, or the short cut hair, but it's impossible to tell whether the child is a boy or a girl. They seem more like a mouse, big brown eyes wide and terrified as they stare up at the others.

No one says a word at first. It's bad enough to imagine the answer to the question. To put those morbid visions into words — no one has that courage, not right away.

"Maybe they'll eat us."

It's a boy who breaks the silence, a young man of about seventeen. His hair is as black and as slick as obsidian, and his skin contrastingly pale. His eyes are more that of a rat's. A small grin plays over his thin lips as he poses the idea to the others. "Not that there's much fat on us, but who knows."

"Shut up, Emm," a girl crouching beside him says. Wavy locks of black hair hang about her body like a curtain. She clutches her arms to her stomach as if she's sick. "Just shut up." The way she chokes on her words, it certainly seems like she's trying to keep from throwing up.

"Perhaps they'll just execute us." Another girl, this one with wispy blonde hair and dark tanned skin, speaks up. Her face is too soft to be very old, but there is a seriousness in her eyes that seems both aged and forbidding. "Perhaps it will be like the old myth, where the first born children were all struck down to make a point."

"But I'm not first born… The first born son in my family is already dead. After him, there's my brother. Then my two sisters. I'm not even the youngest — I've another brother after me." The boy who says this has fear and misery knitted over his brow. He is slim and muscular, that vague body shape which is either very healthy and strong, or on its last legs before dying of starvation. It's a shape all the children have become too familiar with. "And there's not a mother or father for any of us…" he adds, more to himself than anyone else, it seems.

"Damned districts, you lot are stupid. You honestly think they're just going to kill us? Just like that?" A harsh, bemused voice, followed by a snort of mixed amusement and disgust.

The whole group turns. Slightly separate from the rest of them, leaning against the wall, picking at her fingernails, stands a tall girl. Her eyes — bright, yellow eyes — make no effort to look at the others, apparently perfectly entranced with the nails on her left hand. She has no right hand. Her entire right arm is missing, the sleeve pinned up to the shoulder of her garment. The garment immediately explains her missing limb. Although the color is faded by time and wear, the deep crimson garb is that of the rebels of District Five.

"What, you think they're _not_ going to kill us? You think they took us all to the Capitol to give us a better start?" the boy who had suggested they might be eaten asks, raising an eyebrow.

The District Five rebel girl looks at him, then slowly to the others in the group of people. The miserable amusement that had been on her face slowly degrades into plain misery. "This is why we lost, you know," she says. "Because none of us think. Look at the number of us in this group. Do you think there are twenty-four of us by chance?"

Her question is met with silence, an implied, _well, yes, we hadn't really thought about it._

"Twenty-four. Twelve of us are girls, twelve of us are boys," she says. "And twelve districts left that the Capitol wants to punish. Now, I can't speak for any of _you_, but I was what you might call a thorn in the Capitol's side throughout the Rebellion."

Again, nobody says anything, though some of them eye her missing arm. They have the feeling that "a thorn in the Capitol's side" is a bit of an understatement.

"They're not just going to kill us. It's too easy. It's too obvious. They've killed loads of kids. Twenty-four more wouldn't make a difference." And now the girl pauses. For a moment, her face falters, and there is the slightest hint of a tremble in her lip. It's gone in an instant.

"They're going to make an example of us," she says. "And however they do it… it will be a thousand times worse.


	2. Chapter 1

At first Emil Hago had leaned his head on the window of the train, watching as the scenery went by in one undistinguishable blur. The glass had cooled and calmed the bruises that decorated his face. The world beyond that glass very soon grew dull, though; it was just the same scene repeating itself over and over. Smoldering remains buildings, burned plants, bomb craters, and among all of it, grimy district citizens toiling away to build a new world from this rubble. For every little cluster of citizens, there was a Peacekeeper, clad in protective gear and armed to the teeth.

The Rebellion was over. It had been flattened when District 13 went down in a brilliant flash of nuclear light. Game over. You lose. And yet, what troubled Emil's mind as the train sped him back to District 12 — or whatever was left of District 12 — was not the end of the Rebellion.

It was the fact that he didn't care that they had lost.

He cared that he had been arrested. He cared that they had beaten him unconscious, and then revived him just so they could get a few more hits in. He cared that he had been thrown in a dank, low-roofed prison cell with a group of strangers. He cared that on his way to the prison cell, he had seen his sister for the first time since the Rebellion began — and had caused her to be arrested too, just because she was his sister, just because he had let slip that she was connected to him.

But he simply couldn't care that the Rebellion was over. He wasn't angry. He wasn't anguished. He wasn't even relieved. He just felt blank. So it was over. So what?

He glanced at his sister. He couldn't see any bruises on her body, so he assumed she hadn't been handled as he had. That by no means meant she was alright, though. He scarcely recognized her, though. The general shape of her face, the set of her eyes, the tone of her voice, that was all unmistakably hers. But the Lyra he knew was gone. In her place was this disturbed, trembling, wild-eyed girl, crouching on her seat, rocking back and forth, hugging her knees to her chin. It was as if she was trying to make herself small, trying to disappear into herself.

"We'll be home soon, Lyra," Emil said, though he had no idea if it was true. He just couldn't stand the silence any longer. His sister glared at him with wide-eyes.

"Home?" Her tone was harsh. "You think there's a home left?"

Emil couldn't answer that. He had seen so many buildings get blown up, and it left him with little confidence. Besides, it wasn't like she was talking about a building. "Home." The two of them had grown up with a roof over their heads, for the most part, but he still felt like he was homeless. At least, he had, now and then, before the Rebellion started. It seemed trivial now, childish even. "Home is where the heart is" was such a whimsical, silly little phrase. His heart was in his chest, and as long as it was still pumping blood, he really couldn't be bothered with much else.

"Hey Emm... Will Mum and Dad be there?" Lyra spoke softly this time, barely willing to meet Emil's eyes for this question. He looked back at the window, face devoid of any expression. His mind had travelled back to the last time he had seen his mother and father.

It couldn't have been more than a month or so ago. Unarmed, out of supplies, and disconnected from the other rebels, they had just waited. Emil was never sure what the shack they were in was originally for. The roof was just a bit too low to stand at proper height. The foundation was old and strong — perhaps it was some ancient remnant left over from long ago, before the floods and the fires, before the nation of Panem. He would just lie on his back, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, daydreaming about what other strange people had done the very same, centuries before he had been there. His parents would go out in search of food, or news, or anything, really. They probably would've been happy to find a jabberjay at that point. They would never admit it to him, but he was fairly sure they had no idea where in the world they were. They had been on the offensive for so long, that when they were finally forced to flee on the defensive, they had no clue as to where to go.

So they had ended up in the middle of nowhere.

That day had been precisely like any other. When the hunger pang in his stomach finally roused him from sleep, the shack was empty. He stared up into nothing, waiting for the familiar rustling of his parents feet as they returned.

He practically hit his head on the ceiling scrambling to his feet when the door swung open, slamming against the wall as his parents fell over themselves to get inside. Their faces were utterly drained — of color, of energy, of hope. That keen hunger that he could always see in the set of their jaw or the crease of their eyebrows was also gone.

It had taken him a few moments to realize what it was: his parents looked defeated.

"What?" he asked, a sinking knot forming in the pit of his throat. "What is it?"

His parents looked at each other, and his mother nodded. Without saying a word, his father slowly took a gun out from his back pocket and began loading it. Emil raised an eyebrow. "... where did you get that?"

Ignoring his question, his mother spoke, her voice hardly audible over the clinking of the bullets going into the gun. "We're done, Emil. There's no coming back from this. It's unwinnable."

"What do you mean?" Emil kept his eyes on the bullets his father was putting into the gun.

"District 13's gone. Annihilated. They bombed it to oblivion," his mother went on. "We've lost. And now they're coming for us."

The words didn't immediately sink in. Emil wasn't sure if they ever quite sunk in. He had just blinked a few times, bewildered, looking from the now fully loaded gun, his mother's downcast eyes, and his father's sullen face.

"So we're going to fight them off with that pistol...?" he asked cautiously. His parents cast each other a look.

"Not exactly," his mother said. His father raised the gun, aiming it at Emil's head. The knot in his throat sunk to the pit of his stomach.

"What are you doing?" His voice was trembling.

"They'd torture you if they caught you," his father said. The gun clicked.

"It's better this way," his mother was saying. But her words were lost in the air as Emil dropped flat to the floor. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder as the deafening bang of the gun reverberated throughout the room. Emil rolled back up to his feet, stumbling as the pain in his shoulder made his stomach lurch.

"Are you insane?" he yelled, staring with disbelief at his parents.

"We—" his father started to say, but Emil didn't wait this time. He gave his father a hard kick, making him double over in pain. Emil didn't wait another instant. He tore away, running.

"Emil, wait!" His mother's voice sounded faintly behind him. He didn't look back. After the Peacemaker's arrested him, he heard from someone that his parents had stayed hiding in that shack until they were surrounded on all sides by oncoming Capitol fighters. Then, they had detonated an improvised bomb. He had no idea where they had gotten the materials for it. They'd probably collected them over those many days they claimed to be looking for food. They blew themselves up, and took a couple of Capitolites out with them. Thus had ended the pathetic reign of terror the Hago family had waged against the Capitol. A double suicide.

Emil could easily imagine them doing it. They had probably smiled right before they detonated the bomb, smiled in knowing they were taking just a couple others down with them. It made him sick to his stomach.

"No," he said at length, turning back to his sister. "Mum and Dad won't be there."

**x/x/x/x/x/x**

The other twenty-three people — children, really, they were all children — had been cleared out of the prison cell hours ago, and still nobody came to take her away. Jonah Rouen sighed, picking at the fingernails on her left hand. They had gone blunt. Mark had laughed at her when he saw her sharpening them. "Going to scratch the eyes off of them or something?" he asked.

She had smiled. "You can never be too prepared."

Jonah wasn't sure what had happened to Mark. He was probably dead. That was her default for anyone whose whereabouts she wasn't sure of. Her parents were probably dead. Her comrades-in-arms she had been separated from were probably dead. Truth be told, she wasn't really sure of where she herself was right now, but that sounded about right: she was probably soon to be dead.

The others had been lead away in pairs of two. First to go had been a girl and a boy called Amethyst and Peridot; the ridiculous names suggested they lived in District 1. The next boy-girl pair had been unfamiliar in any way, but the third boy-girl pair had made her look up. The Capitolites had called the boy "Eric Branson." It couldn't possibly have been _that_ Eric, could it? Eric Branson, the District 3 boy who figured out how to dissipate smoke to sedate entire fields of tracker jackers? The one who modified that same system to use the Capitol's tear gas against them? He was a rebel hero.

The children kept on being led away two by two, until they got to what would've been the District 5 — her district. That time, a boy was led away by himself, the Peacekeepers looking over their shoulder at her as they walked away.

A number of the kids' names had been familiar, but they had all been thrown from her mind when she heard the surname of the last boy-girl pair.

"Emil and Lyra Hago, come with us."

Twelve pairs of kids led away in order of district, and the twelfth had the surname Hago. Jonah had heard of a Hago family from District 12. A half-crazy couple who had orchestrated coal mine cave-ins before the Rebellion had even begun, just to cause the Peacekeepers trouble and to keep coal from getting to the Capitol. The Hago family, which hadn't cared if a few District citizens had to die, if it meant they could score one against the capitol. Jonah had never thought a couple like that would have children. Maybe there was another "Hago" family in District 12. Somehow, Jonah doubted it.

She sighed, sinking down so that she was sitting. It was the only way she could stretch her legs out to their full length. She shut her eyes. Maybe at least in her dreams, she could escape this place.

**x/x/x/x/x/x**

The train pulled into the District 12 station with an unsteady lurch. Emil and Lyra didn't move, waiting for the same four Peacekeepers who had escorted them out of the prison cell to come and get them. Sure enough they came, two carrying guns, the other two, handcuffs. They were each cuffed wrist-to-wrist with a Peacekeeper, and the other two pointed the guns at their backs.

"Let's go," one of the Peacekeepers, a man with one marble eye, said. Emil didn't need any encouragement, but Lyra was dragging her feet. Every time she started to slow up, the Peacekeeper behind her nudged her along with the end of his gun.

They were led down the streets of District 12 in this fashion — or at least, whatever was left of the streets of District 12. It was as if they were in a hollowed out shell of a town, the crumbling frames of buildings being the only remains of what had been before the Rebellion. All over the place, little make-shift plywood shacks had sprung up, presumably the temporary shelter for the citizens while they rebuilt the District.

As they walked, some of the citizens glanced up at them, before the Peacekeepers surveying them barked for them to get back to work. Here, like in all the other Districts, everyone was just building. Rebuilding. Going back to square one.

Their escort troop of Peacekeepers finally came to a halt at a plywood shack that looked exactly like every other they had passed. Inside, there were two thin mattresses, each with one blanket, and a dirt floor. Nothing else.

"This will henceforth be your home for the next two weeks," said the marble-eyed Peacekeeper as Emil and Lyra were un-handcuffed, "and you are henceforth under house arrest. All sanitary and nutritional necessities will be provided for you by the Capitol."

_What a liar_. Emil couldn't help a wry grin spreading over his face.

"If you go more than five feet out of your home in any direction, you will be promptly executed via firing squad. A detail will be on constantly patrol outside your home," the Peacekeeper continued.

Emil just laughed. _Well, at least he's not lying about everything._

"What happens after two weeks?" Lyra asked, looking up at the four Peacekeepers who were making their way out of the shack. The marble-eyed man smiled, his lips curling back in a manner that was wholly unnatural.

"Nothing to worry yourself over," he said, "just a little game.


	3. Chapter 2

"It's kind of amazing, isn't it?" the boy said, pressing his face to the window. "They really rebuilt a town in two weeks." He seemed so childish, gazing at the outdoors the way a little kid would at a cake shop window. Rose Levine had to remind herself that he was, in fact, two years her senior.

"It's not quite the world in seven days," she muttered, brushing a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear as she looked over his shoulder. The truth was that she absolutely refused be awestruck by anything the Capitol did. That's what they were aiming for. _Look at our might. Look at what we can do without even trying. _She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of being able to think that.

That wouldn't change the fact that it was an undeniably powerful feat. What had still been a wreck of burned out buildings and razed fields two short weeks ago had now regained the shape of civilization. Unlike the scabs on her arms and legs, which healed inward from the edges, the town made its recovery from the center outward. First to spring up had been a Justice Building and a Town Hall, the latter of which became the temporary home for the most co-operative district citizens. The rest went on living in their little shacks. A massive television screen was installed beside the Justice Building, and gradually, store fronts and offices began to take shape.

What captured Rose's eye most, however, was a row of buildings just off in the distance, almost out of sight. They were houses, but nothing like the houses she had ever seen in the past. When she was arrested and imprisoned the Capitol, she had very briefly got a glimpse of the candy-colored streets with their glimmering buildings. That was the closest comparison she could make for these newly built homes in the distance. However, where the Capitol had seemed overdone and tacky, these houses seemed grandiose and proud. Were they to be Peacekeeper homes? Were they for citizens who had betrayed the Rebellion — or rather, sided with the Capitol? Rose had watched them intently since they first appeared on the horizon, but she hadn't seen a single person go in or out of them. What were they for?

Rose had no chance to wonder over them today, though, because there was a different sight that was giving her pause.

A crowd had formed outside the justice building, and on the massive TV screen, some man with garishly purple hair matched by an equally appalling pinstripe suit was speeching and gesticulating over something. It was impossible to hear at this distance.

It was a twisted sight for Rose. The massive crowd, the figure speaking out in front of them — that much felt like home. But who was this disgusting purple man? It was supposed to be her parents up their speaking, telling the old tales from centuries before. Tales of rebellion against tyrants. Tales of salvation. Even if she told herself she wouldn't see her parents speaking like that again, another part of Rose told herself that information was too much. She had to shut it down, sort it into a non-threatening corner of her mind. Yes, she had seen her parents with their hands tied behind their backs. Yes, she had seen Peacekeepers pull black bags over their heads. She had seen two people wearing black bags over their head stand against the wall as a detail of Peacekeepers took aim. She had seen two bodies crumpled on the ground and a wall splattered with an alarming shade of red.

But none of that had to mean anything if she didn't string it all together. Dead was a word someone else might use, but "somewhere else" was what she would say. Rose shut her eyes a moment, shuddering as that same lump threatened the form in her throat. She wouldn't allow that to happen anymore. She as fourteen years old; as far as she as concerned, she had outgrown tears.

"Rose… Rose, they're coming here."

The boy's voice made her start, snapping her eyes open and her chin up to attention. She saw what he meant. The same four Peacekeepers from two weeks prior were making their way towards the little shack.

As if caught in the act of some wrong, the boy scrambled from the window, and his agitated movements made Rose copy him without quite meaning too. He had no calm to him whatsoever. He kept glancing up at the door and then back at her, then towards the floor. Rose grimaced. _Pull yourself together already!_ She would've liked to have said that, but somehow it seemed unsportsmanlike of her.

The Peacekeepers did not bother knocking. The same stocky, pony-tailed woman from before pushed the door open. This time, they were not handcuffed, but instead had one Peacekeeper on each side. Each Peacekeepers placed one hand on their shoulders, holding a gun in the other.

"Shall we?" the pony-tailed woman said, although the guns made it clear there was no question about it. Rose shut her eyes for another moment, taking a deep breath in. The District 5 girl's words were running through her mind. _It will be a thousand times worse. _To force that thought from her mind, she pictured her parents. She pictured them when they had their hands tied behind their backs. She remembered the calm on their faces. The dignity of their heads held high.

She opened her eyes and nodded once. "Let's go."

**x/x/x/x/x/x**

"Can't you at least let him hold my hand? It's obvious we're not going anywhere, _sir_."

The pretty girl sounded so angry when she said it. She was arguing with the men-in-white. Peacekeepers, they were called. Vega had some foggy memory of when he was very small, and white-clad people called Peacekeepers would visit the orphanage to make sure the kids were getting enough food. That was always the reason they gave for visiting, anyway. If he remembered right, he had been hungry an awful lot at that orphanage.

"Oh, buck up. He's twelve. That's well old enough to walk by himself!" The lead man-in-white was arguing back at the pretty girl. Vega had to remind himself that she had a name, too. It had been hard for him to say, though. Jee-on? Ji-yun?

"Jiyeon," she had said, laughing as she corrected him for the third time. "Just call me Genie, or Jiji. Everyone else did, too."

Vega hadn't been sure what she meant by that. Everyone else_ did_, too. What had happened to them? He had tried asking, just once, but when he did, all the laughter had fallen from her face. He didn't want to see her looking like that. He never mentioned it again. He was never sure what was an acceptable thing to say, what would make Jiji turn away, what would put that infinite distance into her eyes; or what would make her smile at him, laugh for no reason he could understand. It had been so long, so _very_ long since he had spoken with people.

There had been a time when he wasn't quite sure that others existed. Was there really such a thing as "other people," or was it a fantasy that he had just dreamed up so he wouldn't feel lonely? He had asked the birds, but the birds just repeated his words back at him. They were such strange creatures, the birds. He missed them, a little bit. But then, they had led him to the Peacekeepers, and the Peacekeepers had put him in prison, and he hadn't liked that at all. So why could he not stop missing the birds?

"If he's old enough to walk by himself, why are you putting a gun to his head?" Jiji was retorting, arms crossed. Vega looked up at her, not saying a word. He wondered if she realized there was a gun behind his head as well. The Peacekeeper was rolling his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose, lips tightly pursed.

"Look," he said. "If you think it'll make such a difference to hold the little bastard's hand, then go ahead, but believe me, it'll only hurt you later."

Jiji didn't answer him. She just put her hand in Vega's and gave it a tight squeeze. He was still looking up at her. She glanced down at him and smiled. It didn't look like the smiles she had when she laughed. It looked like she was really doing her best to keep it there.

Hand in hand, they were led to the Justice Building. Jiji ignored the Peacekeepers walking in a square surrounding them, instead swinging the arm that held Vega's hand and glancing about them.

"Look," she said, nodding to some of the buildings. "They've already got some factories back up again." Vega tried to follow her gaze, but the buildings she was looking at seemed exactly the same as all the rest to him. If he was twelve now, then it had been what, five years? Since he had last been in District 8. He felt the same now as he had back then. The place as altogether too gray.

When they reached the crowd, the Peacekeepers made them separate, sorting Jiji into a crowd of other girls, and Vega, a crowd of other boys. The pretty girl winked at him as she walked away. She stood tall among the crowd; more of a woman than a girl like the rest.

But now a woman in a rectangular purple dress was hobbling onto the platform in front of them, and beside her, a massive screen lit up with her face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you," she said, and paused as a drumroll played over the speakers. After the bash of the cymbals had a moment, she again took the mic to her mouth.

"The first annual Hunger Games!"

The words of the dark-haired boy from the prison cell echoed unbidden into Vega's mind.

_Maybe they'll eat us_.

For whatever reason, a shudder went down his spine.

**x/x/x/x/x/x**

At first, Jonah had tried to count the days by scratching a little line into the cell wall every time she woke up, but she gave up after about a week. What did it matter how long she would be in that cell? It couldn't matter at this point. When the day came that two Peacekeepers did open the door to her cell, she didn't jump to her feet or even turn her head. She just narrowed her eyes in their direction.

"What now?"

"It's time to let you out." She recognized the Peacekeeper who spoke. She remembered the discolored electricity burns all down the left side of his face. It was the same man who had failed to arrest her once — and had succeeded he next time.

"You're just going to let me out?" Jonah raised an eyebrow, putting her hand on her hip. "If that was how it was going to be, why not just send me home with that other District Fiver? What's-his-name, Andy, or Ryan, or… Adrian, that was it."

The burn-scarred Peacekeeper stayed standing rigid at the door, while two others came into the cell. One handcuffed her while the other led her out at gunpoint. They made their way through a twisting passage, up a number of ladder, and finally up from underground, and out onto a train station. A train was already waiting, doors open.

"They were cleared for house arrest," the scarred one said as the others pushed Jonah onto the train. "You, on the other hand, were not. We decided the threat you posed was more serious than the need to keep up the illusion."

Jonah glared at him. Blasted Capitol, what did they think they gained in being so artfully vague? "What illusion?" She didn't expect to get a straight answer.

She got exactly what she _was_ expecting: a thin grin dancing over the man's scarred features. "I'm sure you'll figure it out, Miss Rouen. You were always a smart one."

The train doors slid shut, and the man's face seemed to blur into his scars as the train sped away.


	4. Chapter 3

By the time Emil had managed to locate Lyra in the crowd of girls, the lavender-haired lady on stage was already a ways into her spiel. Emil really had no interest in what she was saying. He just wanted to make sure that the marble-eyed Peacekeeper hadn't been lying when he told Emil, "She'll be coming right after you. We're assembling the boys first, so _move_." Even then, Emil would've stayed put, despite the gun pointed at his temple, if not for the look that Lyra gave him. She had looked so wearied, as if she hardly had the energy to be glaring at him like that. She didn't say a word, but her narrowed eyes spoke loud and clear.

_Why are you making more trouble for me? Just go like the man told you to._

So Emil had left the ruddy little shack. He let the Peacekeepers lead him to District 12's Town Center which, while still seeming a bit shoddy and last-minute, was a great improvement on the rubble that had been there two weeks ago. A woman with pale lavender hair was standing in front of the assembling District 12 citizens, surveying them with a look of very thinly-veiled distaste. Emil was herded into a ringed-off section full of other District 12 boys, all of them somewhere between the ages of about ten to about twenty, as far as he could tell. There was another big empty ring which was soon filled with District 12 girls of similar age. As soon as all these children were present, the woman had started speaking, while Emil looked desperately for his sister amongst the crowd. He had finally spotted her about four rows from the front, standing near the edge, arms still wrapped around her stomach, eyes on her feet. There was no way he could get her attention at this distance. Reluctantly, he let his gaze shift back to the woman on the podium. She was looking much more lively than she had before she was talking.

"… which means at long last, after these years of toil, of sacrifice, of misery, and of pain, Panem's darkest days are over. At last, we are all once again reunited under the benevolent and merciful rule of our great Capitol. Already, the seeds of healing have been planted, and have sprung up in the form of these great buildings before you!" Here she paused to gesture at the Justice Building behind her, and the Town Hall adjacent to it. Emil raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure if "great" would've been the word he would use to describe the buildings, but there was no point in arguing, even in the privacy of his own mind. The Capitol used words to taint reality in whatever way they chose. It was no use arguing against that. The Capitol would just find a way to twist your arguments back at you.

"Surely, from this day forth, we will bask in the unending bounty of Panem, led onward by our illustrious President, who will lead us with infinite wisdom and power. In his deep diplomacy and caring, he has chosen to shed kindness on the Districts, and allow them all to continue living safely under the Capitol's wing. All except District 13, which in its folly and conceit, believed itself powerful enough to overtake the Capitol, only to be crushed by that magnificent city's might. Now, it has been reduced to dust. May that be a symbol to all the scum rebels who still hold despicable malice towards the Capitol in the depths of their hearts," the woman went on, looking through the crowd with a stern expression. Emil stared back at her. Frankly, it was the most he could do to stifle a laugh. He had foggy memories of speeches like this from his childhood, but it had been so long since he was subjected to them. He wasn't sure if they had always sounded this ridiculous, or if he had simply become more aware.

"One bitter truth has come to light through these cruelest of years. Despite all the blessings the Capitol has generously showered upon the Districts, there are many selfish citizens who remain unsatisfied, not realizing that they would be degraded to less than dirt if not for the Capitol's brilliant leadership. Thus, to remind the lower citizens of the invincible power of the Capitol, our beloved President has devised a new tradition for the people of Panem."

For the first time in a long while, Emil started to feel nervous. It was obvious that this is what she had been leading up to. Whatever was coming, it was the reason behind this entire assembly, perhaps even behind his imprisonment. He hit his lip, willing the butterflies in his stomach to subside.

"It is my unprecedented honor to introduce to you, the first annual _Hunger Games!_"

The woman raised her arms high, as if expected a frenzied round of wild applause. When she was met with silence from the crowd, she cleared her throat and hastily continued. "To remind the Districts that the many gifts they receive from the Capitol are not free; to remind the Districts of their own brutal nature which was the true cause behind this accursed rebellion; to let us all keep in our minds that while we enjoy prosperity now, it has not come without suffering; all twelve districts of Panem will participate in the Hunger Games. From each district, two tributes — one boy, one girl, each between the ages of twelve and eighteen — will be chosen at random, and sent to the arena, where they will face the other tributes in mortal combat. Twenty-four will enter. Only one will emerge victorious, bringing wealth and celebrations home to his or her native District."

A complete hush fell over the crowd of District 12 citizens as the woman's words sunk in. Emil's heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood pulsing past his ears. His mind was racing, trying to piece all of her words together with the events of the past few weeks. Twenty-four tributes? He remembered the other children in the prison cell, the words of the rebel from District 5. But the woman said the tributes would be chosen at random. Wasn't it obvious that the Capitol already had their tributes in mind? It was inevitably going to be him. Him, and for the female tribute—

Emil went cold. He spun his head back to face where his sister was standing. To his surprise, Lyra was not looking back at him, a horrified look on her face. She was shaking her head back and forth. _No, no, this isn't happening. Tell me this isn't going to happen._

The woman on stage continued, looking satisfied with the effect she had had on the crowd. "Now, without further ado, the selection of tribute!"

Two peacekeepers, each holding a massive glass bowl filled with slips of paper, appeared from somewhere behind the podium. They placed them on either side of the lavender-haired woman. She smiled out over the crowd.

"Ladies first, shall we?"

The only sound that could be heard was the woman's hand as it shuffled through the slips of paper, finally retrieving one and slinking out of the bowl. The woman unfolded it, barely glancing down at the slip before looking back out over the crowd.

_"Lyra Hago!"_

A buzz of whispers swept through the citizens of District 12 like a bushfire. In the fourth row of the crowd of girls, Lyra Hago collapsed to her knees, clutching her stomach and shaking all over until two Peacekeepers pulled her up by the arms and dragged her towards the podium. Someone in the crowd screamed out, _"No!"_ in a ragged, choked voice. It took Emil an instant to realize the voice was his own.

He hardly heard the woman call his name. He staggered onto the stage, eyes fixed on his sister, who was huddled over, still shaking. He wondered if that was what he had looked like to his parents when his father had tried to shoot him. Emil wondered if, were he to have a gun right then and there, he wouldn't do the precise same thing to poor little Lyra.

**x/x/x/x/x/x/x**

"… and for our female District 5 tribute, please put your hands together for _Jonah Rouen!"_

Jonah smirked a little as she approached the stage. She had never heard applause-at-gunpoint before; it was certainly peculiar. Everyone in the audience managed to bring their hands together in perfect unison, so it sounded more like a bunch of feet trudging along on a death march, than actual applause. The announcer had some more to say after this, about honor and struggle and other words of which he could never understand the true meaning. Jonah kept her eyes fixed on the crowd, trying to looking individually at each and every person looking back at her. She wanted each one of them to see that she was not afraid.

When the announcer was done, the massive screen lit up with scenes of each other district, and their respective tributes. Jonah was unsurprised to see the other children from that prison cell all make their way onto their district's stage. It made sense now — the reason that they were sent back two weeks prior. That was the illusion the Peacekeeper had meant: the illusion that these children had been home in their districts the entire time.

The illusion that these tributes were in any way random.


	5. Chapter 4

"I know who you are, you know."

The train ride had been blissfully silent up until now. The world beyond the window was indecipherable, blurred by sheets of rain which had started about an hour ago. Still, Jonah had been satisfied to watch it roll by in little rivulets. But it seemed the boy sitting across from her hadn't been. Why did he have to ruin it with meaningless conversation? Didn't he have thoughts that he wanted to be left alone with? If he really didn't, couldn't he respect that she did? She sighed, responding without looking away from the window.

"I know who you are too. The announcer lady said you're Adrian Heely." The truth was, Jonah didn't know exactly who _he_ was, but she had known of a Heely family living in District 5. They had been vital in the rebellion, leading the effort to re-route power away from the Capitol and towards District 13, and so forth. She wasn't sure of what had become of them, but she suspected they had been arrested when District 5 had surrendered. Presumed dead.

"Yeah, but I knew who you were before that. Jonah Rouen, the girl who became a captain. You're a legend," the boy went on, his voice hushed. Maybe it was reverence, although it sounded more like quiet frustration.

"Am I? You don't say," Jonah muttered. She had meant for it to sound dismissive, in the hopes that Adrian would understand that she was uninterested in this conversation. In the end, though, her sarcastic tone just made her come off as conceited, even to herself. It was as though she was saying, _of course I'm a legend._ There was no use trying to correct herself, though. The damage was already done; Adrian was obviously annoyed when he spoke.

"Yeah, my parents couldn't shut up about you. I got so sick of hearing it. Jonah who saved a baby, Jonah who took out a hovercraft, Jonah who escaped arrest," he grimaced. "I thought you'd be older by now, though. No matter how young you started leading rebels, I thought you'd be… I don't know, twentyish at least."

Jonah smiled wryly, finally turning to face him. "You're right. I'll be twenty in a week."

The boy furrowed his brow. "But… You aren't eighteen?"

Jonah considered explaining it to him. No, it would be more interesting to see if he could understand it by himself. "Why would I be eighteen?"

"The tributes will be between the ages of twelve and eighteen — isn't that what the announcer lady said?"

"Oh, sure." Jonah paused, keeping her eye on the boy. _Last chance to figure it out, kid. _Adrian's expression was blank. Apparently, he wasn't even going to try.

_What a pain_, Jonah thought, but the quiet grin never left her face. "And as far as the Capitol's concerned, I am eighteen. I am whatever age they decide to put on my birth certificate."

The boy's eyebrows went up slowly as it dawned on him. "… oh."

"There, you're getting it now, aren't you?"

He turned away from her, looking at his feet. He looked as though he was embarrassed, and for a moment Jonah regretted speaking so condescendingly to him. From the look of it, he couldn't be too much younger than her. She knew _she_ would resent being spoken down to from someone only a bit older than her. Jonah frowned, unsure if she was frustrated with herself or with Adrian. Really, wasn't he being a bit thick? Couldn't he use his brain before he ran his mouth?

As though he could hear her thoughts, there was a long pause before he finally spoke again, mumbling without looking up at her, "I thought it was a bit suspicious."

"Hm?"

"That all the tributes were the people we were in prison with."

"… you just picked up on that now?"

"Well, I had an inkling when I saw that paper the lady drew when she was picking tributes. The paper which had my name."

The frown faded from Jonah's face. She hadn't been looking at the slips of paper. She raised an eyebrow, as if to say, _go on._

"It was blank."

Jonah tried to call the scene back to mind. The little slips of paper couldn't have been any larger than her index finger. Frankly, she had been too distracted watching the crowd to pay much attention to them. As soon as the announcer mentioned the tributes, Jonah had assumed that she would be one of them. But this Adrian boy hadn't had any idea what was going on. He could have panicked, could have worried over his fate. But instead he had been paying enough attention to his surroundings that he was able to see that the little slip of paper didn't have his name written on it.

He was gathering intel on the enemy.

A grin crept onto Jonah's face. _Maybe he's not so thick after all._

**x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x/x**

"Ugh, what are we going to do with all of this hair? It's in _knots_. Has it _ever _been washed? Gross. Can't we just cut it off?"

"No, no, it needs to be long! Otherwise the hairstyle won't work, stupid!"

"Can't we go with boyish-chic or something?"

"She'll look too much like her brother. The audience needs to know which is which."

The ceiling above Lyra's head was a bluish off-white. There was a row of lights just above her face, and she had to squint to see much of anything. It obscured the faces of the three Capitol-dwellers who had been crowing over the state of her legs, her nose, her fingernails, and now her hair, for the past hour or so.

When the Peacekeepers had first separated her from her brother and brought her into this sterile little room with a medical bed and a whole row of mysterious instruments lined up beside it, Lyra had been sure they were going to torture her. Inject her with some poisons, or cut off her fingers, or something. While she had been wrong about the methods, she was fairly sure this classified as some form of torture.

At first she had tried to cooperate. She lay on the bed silently. She let them inspect her for "imperfections," as they kept calling them. But when they started ripping the hair off of her legs, she had screamed, kicked, and made a break for the doorway. In the end, they had opted to sedate her, and had carried on with their business. One of the three seemed bizarrely concerned, though Lyra couldn't understand why.

"Be nice, you two, the girl can hear you," this third Capitol citizen now hissed at the others, patting Lyra on the forehead in what was probably meant to be a comforting manner. Lyra shivered. "We just want you to look good, you know?" Lyra tried to answer, but the sedative made her lips sluggish and her tongue tired. The effort made her stomach lurch, and she thought she might be ill.

She shut her eyes, thinking of how often she fell ill when she was a little child. It was usually just fevers and flus, but once she came down with a horrible cough that wouldn't go away. Her whole body would shake, and sometimes she would cough so hard she threw up. Once when that happened, her brother clapped her on the shoulder and said, "You should get some rest. But careful if you fall asleep — you could choke on your vomit and die."

She tried to keep herself up that whole night, and when she did sleep, she had nightmares where she was swimming, but someone's hand was on her head, holding her underwater. No matter how much she kicked or scratched at the person's hand, she couldn't surface. It felt like she might drown. It was just a terrifying dream back then; remembering it now, though, she wondered if that person had been trying to make her swim harder, to make her fight for her life as if it was truly at stake.

It was strange, really. She had never seen the person's face in that dream, but she had always been sure that it was Emil.

"Oh no, she's crying…"

"It's because you're brushing too roughly. You just want to pull the _knots_ out, not the _hair_."

"There, there, dear, we're almost done. You're going to look lovely, really. Don't be sad."

If not for the sedative, Lyra might have smiled. _I'm not sad. I'm relieved._


End file.
